To the editor: UC Berkeley College of Legislation Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s proposal for a brand new U.S. structure is a superficial marketing campaign advocacy piece that may throw the child out with the bathwater.
He measures our present Structure in opposition to some nonexistent perfect of good democracy, in comparison with which our current system is self-evidently “absurd.”
He ought to pay much less consideration to present polls and extra consideration to historical past. The “horrifying actuality” of the republic within the “abyss” of political apocalypse is way extra more likely to emerge from throwing the Structure within the rubbish can and beginning over.
Tom Weiss, Woodland Hills
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To the editor: Memo to the individuals of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota and Delaware: You might be nonetheless allowed to manage the inner affairs of your states, however you could now not intervene within the insurance policies and affairs of america. These are actually fully managed by California, Florida, Texas, New York and Pennsylvania.
Your representatives are nonetheless allowed to indicate up in Congress, however don’t count on anybody to take them severely. Your energy is dissolved. You might be nonetheless a part of america, however in title solely.
Don’t forget how meager your inhabitants is. You now have an insignificant say in issues of nationwide curiosity.
Your equal illustration within the U.S. Senate has been abolished. You now not matter in Congress nor in U.S. elections, the place your electoral votes are as tiny as you might be.
Why hassle to vote? You are actually second-class states. So, keep in your house. The founding fathers are lengthy gone. You’ll recover from it.
That’s apparently Chemerinsky’s revisionist view of the brand new United States. Fortunately, the edge required to rewrite the Structure is extraordinarily excessive.
William Goldman, Los Angeles
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To the editor: I’m shocked that Chemerinsky ignored the short-circuiting of Article I, Part 2 of the Structure.
The constitutional minimal of 1 consultant for each 30,000 individuals was a menace to rural American nativists, so as a substitute of rising Congress together with our inhabitants, membership within the Home was frozen at 435 voting representatives in 1929.
Since a state’s electors are allotted primarily based on its variety of senators and representatives, the Electoral Faculty would have remained sturdy if Congress have been allowed to develop, and the favored vote could be higher mirrored than it’s in the present day.
Quite than going by way of the problems of amending the Structure as Chemerinsky suggests, a easy congressional change of regulation to cancel the 1929 Reapportionment Act would suffice. The battle could be to get present members of Congress to dilute their very own energy.
Pini Herman, Beverly Grove
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To the editor: The Electoral Faculty has to go. It’s ridiculous that we undergo this each 4 years when the way forward for the nation could possibly be balancing on the whims of only one state.
Moreover, it has been proven again and again that when a president doesn’t have a preferred mandate, that presidency will not be a profitable one.
The founders most likely had an excellent purpose for structuring the election as they did, however that was nearly 250 years in the past. There isn’t a justification in the present day for this lopsided system.
Zena Thorpe, Chatsworth
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To the editor: Mr. Chemerinsky, I imagine former President Trump agrees with you that america wants a brand new Structure. Watch out what you would like for.
Larry Furman, Woodland Hills
